6th of February, 2023 – Didim, Turkey.

It’s 6 o’clock in the morning and my wife and I are ripped out of our sleep from loud voices on the upper floor of our flat. My in-laws were here from Adiyaman in the east of the country on the occasion of our daughter’s birth on 3rd of February, and they seemed very alarmed. My wife stormed up the stairs to find out what’s wrong.

An earthquake, a huge earthquake! 7.8 magnitude! The entire east of Turkey is hit! It’s totally gone, everything is gone! There’s no phone connection, we can’t reach anybody. My sister-in-law, who also happened to be with us, was eventually able to reach her husband, who had stayed behind in Malatya with her two young daughters. “We’re trying to get out of here, but there’s so much snow – 1 meter of snow! And all the roads are broken. Everywhere destruction.”

Slowly, but steadily the news came dripping in. On TV there was only one topic – the topic! It turned out that 10 provinces in the East, from Antakya in the Southwest of the country further Northeast to Diyarbakir, were hit by two very strong earthquakes in a row, one at 4:17 am local time with a magnitude of 7.8 Mw and the other at 1:24 pm with a magnitude of about 7.7 Mw.

While my in-laws were safe with us in Didim, they worried for family and friends, but the biggest drama unfolded in my sister-in-law’s family. Her husband had relocated together with their two daughters to a family house in a nearby village and he had desperately tried to get their kids out. More importantly, his dad had recently undergone a series of heavy surgeries for pancreas cancer. He and his family had to get him out of hospital and they did so in a last minute effort while the walls of the hospital crumbled down.

Eventually, my brother-in-law found a way out of town and travelled to the West to hand over the children to their uncle and grandpa. Then he hurried back to Malatya to be with his dad. Sadly, his dad passed away a week later and great grief befell the entire family. Within the chaos the earthquakes had left behind, a funeral had to be organized and people had to find a flight to Malatya.